Michael J. Crowe - The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, 1750-1900

THE DEVELOPMENT OF MATHEMATICS, E. T. Bell. (0-486-27239-7)

507 MECHANICAL MOVEMENTS: MECHANISMS AND DEVICES, Henry T. Brown. (0-486-44360-4)

A REFRESHER COURSE IN MATHEMATICS, F. J. Camm. (0-486-43225-4)

FLAWS AND FALLACIES IN STATISTICAL THINKING, Stephen K. Campbell. (0-486-43598-9)

HARMONIC PROPORTION AND FORM IN NATURE, ART AND ARCHITECTURE, Samuel Colman. (0-486-42873-7)

THE CURVES OF LIFE, Theodore A. Cook. (0-486-23701-X)

A SHORT HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY: FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO A.D. 1900, T. K. Derry and Trevor I. Williams. (0-486-27472-1)

MATHOGRAPHICS, Robert Dixon. (0-486-26639-7)

EINSTEINS ESSAYS IN SCIENCE, Albert Einstein. (0-486-47011-3)

EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCHES IN ELECTRICITY, Michael Faraday. (0-486-43505-9)

THE GREAT PHYSICISTS FROM GALILEO TO EINSTEIN, George Gamow. (0-486-25767-3)

THIRTY YEARS THAT SHOOK PHYSICS: THE STORY OF QUANTUM THEORY, George Gamow. (0-486-24895-X)

ONE Two THREE... INFINITY: FACTS AND SPECULATIONS OF SCIENCE, George Gamow. (0-486-25664-2)

GRAVITY, George Gamow. (0-486-42563-0)

FADS AND FALLACIES IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE, Martin Gardner. (0-486-20394-8)

RELATIVITY SIMPLY EXPLAINED, Martin Gardner. (0-486-29315-7)

THE GEOMETRY OF ART AND LIFE, Matila Ghyka. (0-486-23542-4)

UNDERSTANDING EINSTEINS THEORIES OF RELATIVITY: MANS NEW PERSPECTIVE ON THE COSMOS, Stan Gibilisco. (0-486-26659-1)

FROM GALILEO TO NEWTON, A. Rupert Hall. (0-486-24227-7)

MECHANICAL APPLIANCES, MECHANICAL MOVEMENTS AND NOVELTIES OF CONSTRUCTION, Gardner D. Hiscox. (0-486-46886-0)

1800 MECHANICAL MOVEMENTS, DEVICES AND APPLIANCES, Gardner D. Hiscox. (0-486-45743-5)

MAKERS OF MATHEMATICS, Stuart Hollingdale. (0-486-45007-4)

THE DIVINE PROPORTION, H. E. Huntley. (0-486-22254-3)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY, 1650-1750: ILLUSTRATIONS AND TEXTS FROM ORIGINAL SOURCES, Martin Jensen. (0-486-42232-1)

SHORT-CUT MATH, Gerard W. Kelly. (0-486-24611-6)

MATHEMATICS FOR THE NONMATHEMATICIAN, Morris Kline. (0-486-24823-2)

THE FOURTH DIMENSION SIMPLY EXPLAINED, Henry P. Manning. (0-486-43889-9)

VIOLENT PHENOMENA IN THE UNIVERSE, Jayant V. Narlikar. (0-486-45797-4)

BASIC MACHINES AND How THEY WORK, Naval Education. (0-486-21709-4)

EXCURSIONS IN GEOMETRY, C. Stanley Ogilvy. (0-486-26530-7)

MUSIC, PHYSICS AND ENGINEERING, Harry F. Olson. (0-486-21769-8)

COMPUTERS, PATTERN, CHAOS AND BEAUTY, Clifford A. Pickover. (0-486-41709-3)

AN INTRODUCTION TO INFORMATION THEORY, John R. Pierce. (0-486-24061-4)

INTRODUCTION TO MATHEMATICAL PHILOSOPHY, Bertrand Russell. (0-486-27724-0)

HELLENISTIC SCIENCE AND CULTURE IN THE LAST THREE CENTURIES B.C., George Sarton. (0-486-27740-2)

MATHEMATICIANS DELIGHT, W. W. Sawyer. (0-486-46240-4)

EINSTEINS LEGACY: THE UNITY OF SPACE AND TIME, Julian Schwinger. (0-486-41974-6)

THE UNITY OF THE UNIVERSE, D. W. Sciama. (0-486-47205-1)

FROM FALLING BODIES TO RADIO WAVES: CLASSICAL PHYSICISTS AND THEIR DISCOVERIES, Emilio Segr. (0-486-45808-3)

FROM X-RAYS TO QUARKS: MODERN PHYSICISTS AND THEIR DISCOVERIES, Emilio Segr. (0-486-45783-4)

GREAT EXPERIMENTS IN PHYSICS: FIRSTHAND ACCOUNTS FROM GALILEO TO EINSTEIN, Morris H. Shamos. (0-486-25346-5)

SATAN, CANTOR AND INFINITY: MIND-BOGGLING PUZZLES, Raymond M. Smullyan. (0-486-47036-9)

THE LADY OR THE TIGER?: AND OTHER LOGIC PUZZLES, Raymond M. Smullyan. (0-486-47027-X)

How TO CALCULATE QUICKLY: FULL COURSE IN SPEED ARITHMETIC, Henry Sticker. (0-486-20295-X)

SPEED MATHEMATICS SIMPLIFIED, Edward Stoddard. (0-486-27887-5)

A SCIENTIST AT THE SEASHORE, James S. Trefil. (0-486-44564-X)

INTRODUCTION TO MATHEMATICAL THINKING: THE FORMATION OF CONCEPTS IN MODERN MATHEMATICS, Friedrich Waismann. (0-486-42804-4)

SUNDIALS: THEIR THEORY AND CONSTRUCTION, Albert E. Waugh. (0-486-22947-5)

How TO SOLVE MATHEMATICAL PROBLEMS, Wayne A. Wickelgren. (0-486-28433-6)

THE TRIUMPH OF THE EMBRYO, Lewis Wolpert. (0-486-46929-8)

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Copyright

Preface to the Dover edition copyright 1999 by Michael J. Crowe
Copyright 1986 by Cambridge University Press

All rights reserved.

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 1999, is an unabridged, slightly corrected republication of the work originally published by Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England in 1986. A new preface by the author has been specially prepared for this edition.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Crowe, Michael J.

The extraterrestrial life debate, 1750-1900 / Michael J. Crowe. Dover ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

9780486145013

1. Plurality of worlds History. 2. Life on other planets History. I. Title.

QB54.C76 1999

376.839 dc21

99-12168
CIP

Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation
40675X02
www.doverpublications.com

It is very gratifying that interest in the exciting developments and ideas discussed in this volume has been sufficient to justify Dover Publications in bringing out this new edition, for which all typographical errors and other easily alterable defects known to me have been corrected. Time constraints have precluded a more thorough revision than this, which for the most part seems unnecessary. Nearly all the corrections that have been made were called to my attention either by the nearly forty reviewers of the book or by such careful readers as Richard Baum, Marvin Bolt, Wilfred. Bussing, Ralph Dexter, Steve Meyer, Marian Crowe, and Garry J. Tee. Thanks to all.

In the thirteen years since this book first appeared, research on the history of ideas of extraterrestrial life has flourished. Although space constraints as well as my own limitations preclude my surveying all these materials, readers may be helped by my citing some useful sources known to me. In selecting works for inclusion, I have focused on the period covered by this book and on research studies rather than on writings aimed primarily at a popular audience, except in cases where serious research has gone into the publication. Before turning to materials written concerning the 17501900 period, I wish to mention a few books that, although extending beyond this scope, are of such importance that they cannot sensibly be excluded.

In my judgment, the most important publication on the history of ideas of extraterrestrial life to appear in the 1990s is Steven Dicks survey of developments in the twentieth century: The Biological Universe: The Twentieth-Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate and the Limits of Science (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1996). The interest generated by this volume rapidly led to the publication of a somewhat shorter version, but with new information: Steven Dick, Life, on Other Worlds: The Twentieth-Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Written by a scholar of eminence, another publication of very impressive quality is Karl S. Guthkes The Last Frontier: Imagining Other Worlds from the Copernican Revolution to Modern Science Fiction (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), which originally appeared as Der Mythos der Neuzeit: Das Thema der Mehrheit der Welten in der Literatur und Geistesgeschichte von der kopernickanischen Wende bis zur Science Fiction (Berne, 1983). In a review of Professor Guthkes volume (Isis, 82 (1991), 5501), I have offered some reflections on how his volume and my own supplement each other and embody somewhat different research strategies. Mention should also be made of a rich source of bibliography unavailable at the time of my research: George M. Eberhart (editor), UFOs and the Extraterrestrial Contact Movement: A Bibliography, 2 vols. (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1986). Three articles, all of a survey nature, deserve mention; these are: (1) Steven Dick, Plurality of Worlds in Encyclopedia of Cosmology, edited by Norriss Hetherington (New York: Garland, 1991, 50212; (2) M. J. Crowe, Extraterrestrial Intelligence in History of Astronomy: An Encyclopedia, edited by John Lankford (New York: Garland, 1997), 2079, and (3) M. J. Crowe, A History of the Extraterrestrial Life Debate in Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, 32 (June, 1997), 147162.